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Mennonite Arts Weekend (2010) included a seminar entitled “Writing your story.” The workshop could well have used a three-hour block. We had time only to identity a topic and to set up several of its elements such as context, character, major action and turning point. I invited the participants to return to their notes after the weekend, write their story and send it to me. I promised to place the stories, with the help of Cara Hummel of the MAW staff, into the MAW website. While the writers worked diligently, I couldn’t be sure that I’d receive any stories. But one came in, and then another and another. By deadline contributors include the list below. (J. Daniel Hess)
Ryan Ahlgrim: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Party Virginia Hofstetter: Snow (a poem) Eileen Lehman: Going to College Freeman Lehman: A Turning Point Elizabeth Nisly-Nagele: First Kid J. Daniel Hess: A Refugee Camp
By Ryan Ahlgrim Indianapolis, IN
“I’m dying,” said Mom matter-of-factly, sitting on the couch in my family room with my wife and children gathered around her. I was not surprised. She had suffered a heart attack six months earlier, and I had heard a rumor that an x-ray revealed a tumor in one of her lungs. Considering that she had been living in a nicotine fog nearly all of her seventy-seven years, and that I remember her periodically hacking her guts out in the bathroom even when I was a little boy, dying from her cigarette addiction was always a strong possibility. But what made me certain that she was now nearing death was the fact that she had asked to stay in my home for two nights. In all the years that Mom and Dad had flown from Santa Fe to Indianapolis to visit me, she had never slept in my house; she had always insisted on staying in a motel. But for this trip she arranged to stay in the homes of each of her children living in the Midwest. So we all knew what was coming. As my brother Randy put it to me over the phone, “This is Mom’s farewell tour.” She began the tour at my home in early May. She told us she had an inoperable tumor pressing against her heart and that she had about three months to live. She did not want us coming out to Santa Fe to be with her; she did not want a funeral; and she did not want the family gathering after her death. “No tears,” she insisted. She wanted her body cremated and her ashes distributed to her six children. We could each dispose of her ashes however we wished—except for Ray, my oldest brother, who had explicit instructions to spread his share of Mom’s ashes on the streets of Las Vegas, where she loved to gamble at the slot machines three times a year. I began making arrangements to cancel my summer sabbatical to Britain and Alaska. Regardless of Mom’s desire for no funeral or family gathering, I could not imagine being out of the country during the time of her death. But when I told my Mom and Dad I was canceling my trip, they insisted I go. They wanted me, my wife and children to enjoy the sabbatical we had been planning for over a year and a half. My siblings all agreed: Mom and Dad would be devastated if we didn’t go. So during the three days Mom stayed at my home, I said my go odbyes to her. As she visited each of her children, revealing her terminal condition and expressing her wishes, some of them protested that she needed to allow us to gather together after her death. She relented, giving us permission to find a date convenient for everyone, but under one condition: it could not be a gathering for mourning her death; it had to be a rock ‘n’ roll party. Five weeks later, after spending an evening touring the haunted alleys and catacombs of Edinburgh, I received an email from Ray that Mom had died. She died the way she wanted to: at home, with minimum fuss, and no life-prolonging measures. My siblings and I picked out a weekend for the rock ‘n’ roll party. On August 31st, dad, my siblings, our spouses and children, and their spouses and children, gathered in Galva, Illinois at my youngest brother Regan’s rambling home. Regan had collected hours of Mom’s favorite songs and burned them on a series of CDs. Throughout the weekend he played the songs she used to play on her massive stereo every Saturday morning: songs like “Up, Up and Away” by The Fifth Dimension, “Good Morning, Starshine” by Oliver, “Five O’ Clock World” by The Vogues, “Soolaimon” by Neil Diamond, “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan, and—Mom’s favorite—the theme song from “Rocky.” In the afternoon we bent our agreement with Mom: over twenty family members jammed together in the living room and talked about what we most appreciated about her. Food was a major topic. Mom’s cooking was limited to the three major food groups: boxed, canned, and frozen; but she excelled at butter and sugar-loaded desserts that have never been surpassed: chocolate chip cookies, brownies, fudge, bread pudding, cheese cake, and banana cake. She was also a master at creating fun family rituals—like having us hide each other’s birthday presents in the living room in the most devious ways possible so that they were nearly impossible to find. She could also come up with bizarre projects—like the time she suggested that we make a totem pole. Soon my sister Christine’s friends showed up with a stolen telephone pole, and we commenced chiseling and carving faces in the pole during an all-night party, after which the pole was set up in the backyard in cement, where it remained for decades. We noted that Mom was an unrepentant nonconformist who encouraged our individuality and enabled us not to be held captive by the expectations of others. She was the cheerleader of the family, believing that together we could do anything we put our mind to. She was inquisitive, theatrical, and wise. My sister-in-law, Gloria, aptly summed up her experience of Mom: “There’s never been a dull moment.” At the conclusion of our sharing, Christine presented Dad with an award: “To the one Mom chose to be the father of us all.” Dad’s eyes welled up, but he managed a clever comeback: “You were all accidents.” We all laughed. Before we dispersed, Dad handed each of his children an envelope stuffed with hundred dollar bills. He explained that over the years Mom had been hiding from him half of all her winnings from her many trips to Las Vegas. Her final wish was for those winnings to now go to us with the following instructions: “Do something fun.”
Virginia Hofstetter
I hate snow! Seven more inches expected--- Trudging uphill toward bus stop... Senior exams today... . No excuses Headlights shine behind me --- No sidewalks here... WHAM! Flying thru tunnel of lights, I land facing car's grill... Still skidding toward me, "I'm not afraid to die," Car able to pull back... I'm injured but not dead! Thanks to the show -and- Angels softening the blow ... I love snow.
Greta Holt Cincinnati, Ohio
My dress ballooned around my legs as I climbed onto the speech teacher’s desk and labored up three stacked chairs to the top of the temporary wall. Teetering on the highest chair, I peered over. Ten feet below, my keys twinkled in carpenter’s light. I thought I might make it. The prayer cap, filmy white and crisp with propriety whispered a warning into my right ear. ‘Plump, middle-aged teachers don’t jump into locked rooms to get their keys.’ “Not even so they can keep working until the sun sinks?” I replied. “I’m trying to be good, you know.” The cap disappeared, its black ribbons flicking back like a tsk. I was used to this kind of interference. The marriage of my parents -- a sober Swiss Mennonite and an irreverent Scot -- had brought forth two imps. Each inhabited a shoulder: one imp was represented by a white prayer cap and the other by a rough sewn kilt. One minute I would listen to the peacemaker, the next to a screeching warrior skinning a glen of its heather in a rush to battle. It could be quite tiring. The time was 5:30 p.m. and I had to get home to grade papers, make calls to the parents of shaky students, cook dinner, plan the next day’s events, and maybe get to watch a show by 10:00 p.m. Thank goodness for “Law and Order” reruns. The bad people rarely won; it was relaxing for a Mennonite to watch. In the distance, I heard workmen slice up yet another section of the school. The air conditioning had pooped out when the first jagged-toothed saw neared an electrical line. For three weeks, my kids and I had sweltered in our fifteen-by-eight foot cell. The cell was sandwiched in the middle of two other tiny rooms: one for the psychologist, the other for the speech teacher. Up here on the wall I could hear the imagined giggles of students and smell the accumulation of old sweat, theirs and mine. ‘Eiye, dearie,’ brogued the kilt into my left ear. The kilt gave me a sharp nudge. ‘Whatcha waitin’ for, love?’ I wasn’t scared of my kilt. I’d taken its dares since childhood: swinging high and fast on the monkey bars above the playground until even the boys begged me to stop; skipping on the lip of a bridge over the town’s swollen creek. Much later on trips with my husband, I might run to the edge of southwestern bluffs peering over the sides into jagged wastelands; and I’d insist on the cliff walking appointment or the two seater flying lesson. My husband, a master of courage with all the problems people could cause, would blanch and roll his eyes. I loved him, but I wasn’t going to stop. I could take only so much of the cap with its precision, its prudence. The bagpipes whined, and the kilt twitched its hem and grinned. Distant forests of blue-faced fighters and hidden man-eating clans painted themselves across my canvass. I grasped the skeletal struts of the torn ceiling. ‘Let us pray,’ murmured the prayer covering as a tri-metered tune by Alice Walker poured forth from an a cappella choir. ‘Bugger it,’ said the kilt, and I jumped. Halfway down I knew I was cooked: nay, sliced, diced, filleted, and fried. The second I’d jumped, the struts squealed and broke from my weight. Steel ripped from aluminum. By swinging my legs out in front of me to prevent cracking my feet on the wall, I’d created a perfect diving position for a back flip: the position at the start of the flip in which the contestant is sitting in the air as if in an easy chair with her legs straight out front. I dropped ten feet and hit bottom. Then, as if swinging from a rusty, broken hinge, my top haIf fell back, and I flopped on the floor like a fish in dry air. Gradually, I could hear the spin of saws and the indifferent calls of workmen. Air rushed into my lungs. I’m hurt, I said. No one answered. I rolled onto my side, gasped at the sharp pull in my back, and crawled over to the desk where my keys winked innocently. Purse and briefcase found their way into one hand. Without knowing if my skeleton still joined the muscles of my body, I used a large book, a rickety chair, a round table and the makeshift wall to rise. Dizzy but determined, I turned the door’s inside knob and watched ruefully as the lock popped open. The lock’s ‘yes was yes’, and its ‘no was no’, an important lesson we Mennos learned in eighth grade catechism class, when they told us we couldn’t take oaths on the Bible. I hobbled down the hall, wondering how I would traverse the four flights of stairs. Pain and shock accompanied me, and the three of us clung to the banister, hoping the railings’ joists could handle the burden. I congratulated myself on my routine of staying long after the kids had gone -- when the highway traffic patterns were better. No one saw me. Achieving ground level, I ignored the kids in after-school care who tugged at my clothes while yelling that so and so had stolen their snacks, and staggered out to my car. I don’t know how I got home; to this day those lost moments frighten me. Who knows what state one’s fellow drivers may be in: reeling from the last boilermaker before facing the wife and kids; furious at unsolvable problems at work; giddy from a stolen kiss; or loopy from a ten foot drop. At home, I showered blistering water onto my back: bent over, grasping at the tiles, trying not to pass out. I was hurt.
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Two months later, I am at a hallowed northeastern writers’ conference, where surprisingly one of my stories has been accepted. I’ve become acquainted with physical therapy, and I ingest kilos of aspirin per day, no hard stuff -- after all, my mind is already distracted by magical beings that talk at me. A venerable institution, the writers’ conference is in the early stages of jettisoning its outmoded system of hand kissing the Great Ones -- butt kissing, insists the kilt -- to a more egalitarian and multicultural environment. The conference does retain its hierarchal framework: its cadre of young dining room waiters say openly that they hate serving us but love the status of having been selected; and its designated Scholars (stories published in high class journals) and Fellows (book published by acceptable presses) add luster to the proceedings. Our workshop is led by a wise man of writing, a modern Great One who doesn’t want slurpy homage. He runs a tight ship, and we learn from each other. I’m a little intimidated, although grateful to be here. One evening, a young woman stands behind the lectern of the Great Hall where celebrated writers have stood, and reads the title story of her collection. She is beautiful; her quiet, confident voice floats along the cultural hills and valleys of an Indian story (‘Asian,’ corrects my politically correct prayer cap). Every phrase is poetry, the subject wistful and sad. The writer and her craft are kissed by the gods. Afterward, I run-walk to my car and drive hairpin curves down the mountain -- past the forests of a beloved American poet -- muttering about deluded would-be writers like me, losers who think they’ve come close to having something to say and the words to say it. I am such a fool. ‘Patience,’ whispers the cap; the kilt screams a ‘sluagh-ghairm’. How could I know the girl behind the podium is about to win the Pulitzer Prize? I get to read at the podium late one night, when we contributers may read to each other, if to no one else. I must admit that, even though they are a bother, both the cap and the kilt do join forces, as they’ve often done, to help me perform. My father used to say that his grandmother, an old school Scot with an almost indecipherable accent, would give her unfailing advice to ‘keep your pecker up’ whenever things got tough -- I think she meant ‘nose’. I did have the nerve to perform; thus, the kilt. But my Mennonite mother instilled in us a desire also to share our talents, not only compete against others; thus, the prayer cap. One can’t be a shrinking violet in the halls of a writers’ conference, but it does help to give of yourself, rather than chase the competition, in the four minutes offered. Yes, four minutes to read a few lines of your work; go one second over, and they’ve threatened to turn the lights off on you. Imagine the embarrassment. Reading at the lectern where your betters have read, running one second over your allotted, tiny four minutes, and having the lights go out, leaving the hall in darkness. Nobody chances it. I read as fast as I can, and it’s fun. Another day, I attend a lecture by a famous Bengali woman writer. She speaks of writing across cultures: the struggles and rewards, the misunderstandings and angry protests when writers are cheeky enough to write in the voices of people outside their ethnicities. I am so impressed by her trials that I begin to think about the cap and kilt that are my constant companions in life. Although my parents were crazy in love, their marriage could be a sports field at times, where two cultures clashed. Even though both people were white, I insist upon giving myself permission to claim biculturality. And I’ll fight -- I mean, debate -- anybody who says I can’t. Hoping I sound even a bit urbane, I write about this to the Bengali lecturer, and she agrees to see me. We have a good talk on the porch of one of the faculty houses. We talk of courage and of culture. I follow my softer instincts; the prayer cap nods approval. By speaking quietly and listening well, I achieve the right tone of interest and respect. It is a perfect moment. But when a fly buzzes around my head, alighting on my teacup numerous times, and landing on my arm, I whack it a good one, stunning the fly in front of the Hindu who has been kind enough to give me a moment. The kilt skitters behind a rock, laughing. Near the end of the week, when my piece is critiqued by my workshop, the comments are pithy and pointed. In the story, a black American careens along a pocked road in the outback of Botswana with a white Afrikaner of dubious intent. My fellow writers spend time on it, arguing about the characters, which, I hope, is a sign that the writer might have hooked ‘em. That -- or they simply don’t like it and are energetically trying to fix the story’s flaws. In any case, after the nervous nellies subside, I’m feeling relieved. It is time for the personal interview with the Great One, the leader of our workshop. Displaying wisdom, he intuits that I really care more about the Afrikaner, than the black American, because I’m interested in the nature of evil. He is not surprised to learn that I am a Mennonite. I drop a few Swiss phrases, just because I can’t help myself. It seems wise to have a personal shtick here. We talk a long time, and we walk into the Great Hall a few minutes late. Another Indian or Bengali or Pakistani is reading a wondrous story. “And no-o-o one can please you, not even God,” she intones. Where will we sit? The rows are blocked by railings and we are walking in on the reader’s one chance to impress the Great Ones sitting in the audience. She gets to read during the daytime. She is a waitress -- one of the chosen, closer to coronation than the rest of us. People are looking at us; we must sit down. My prayer cap whispers, ‘Let him lead, be calm, you’ll work this out.’ But, determined to get out of the way, and in need of action, I hear bagpipes. Beginning with the faraway wails of one whiny pipe, the sound swells to the blow-back force of an army. The kilt dances in impatience and cries, ‘Come on, ye lads!’ Raining down upon us are men in kilts and women in homespun, wielding axes and screaming battle cries, as they pound the meadows toward sure destruction. ‘Dinna’ dae d’ wrong thing,’ starts the prayer cap in confusion. ‘Wait...’ ‘Ayyyeeee!’ screams the kilt. I stride to the middle of the hall, where the rows are divided. All of me swings up under the steel rails of the fifth row. I push myself under the bars and that’s when it happens. The Injury of the Classroom Keys kicks in and I can’t move. People stare in horror as an ample woman swings on the struts like an old acrobat unable to go up or down. ‘And no one can please you, not even God.’ My Great One gives me a push very close to my rear end; I struggle and thrash under the railings, and crab crawl to the nearest seat. The Great One throws himself up over the bars and gracefully lands in his seat in male sprawl. I am conscious of his long body beside mine. I chance a quick look about, realizing that had I followed my prayer cap’s advice, I could have taken six more seconds and found the other side of the auditorium, whose stairway was open and clear. We could have walked, like decent people, to our seats. Unable to escape the disgusted expelling of the assemblage’s breath, I hang my head. The horror. Why do I have to be me? The cap says, ‘It’s all right, cherished child of God. It will pass. Just think of all the people in the world who have had to live through much worse. Those in poverty, in war, imprisoned by the whims of tyrants; those for whom justice is only a dream.’ I unclench my hands, then my jaw and try to sit straight, ignoring the open mouthed disapproval of the people nearby who have been assaulted by my show of force. I am an alien, and unfortunately, I do have a shtick; I will be remembered. Beside me, my workshop leader pretends that nothing has happened, probably a reason he is a Great One. I listen to the talented girl at the lectern. I do have to admit to being a bit tired of the collective talent of the Asians. But attention is returning to the front of the hall; no one has died. The speaker spins her tale, and I begin to feel as if this whole incident, although nightmarish, has been merely a dissonant note of Pan’s flute, half sounded now gone. Sunlight peeks through the branches of his mythical forest. I warm to my vision and begin to feel a comfortable lightness of being. The prayer cap floats down and settles on my shoulder like Jesus’ breath. I’ll regain my poise and my inclination to share. Nipping my ear, the kilt breathes, ‘Eiey, but ye’ve nothing on under your apron, dearie.’ I slouch in my seat, scheming to murder -- I mean, to develop a balanced life that will no longer include my two companions.
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Was this a turning point? I am absolutely certain it is at the time, and change is on my agenda. I work at formulating a life of equilibrium and harmony, accepting my own responsibility for creating the kilt and cap. But, like many other surges of clarity, the moment’s impact ebbs and flows: turning, ever turning. Although the whisperings of the kilt and cap do lessen in time and with effort, I occasionally must bat at the imps on my shoulders.
C.L.L. Cincinnati, Ohio
For reasons my parents did not understand and which I dared only partially explain even to myself, there I was—twenty-one years old—a college abroad student in Marburg, West Germany, 25 years before the Berlin Wall fell. Before a cross cultural experience was a common requirement at private liberal arts colleges, I had reduced my belongings for twelve months to two suitcases and one small trunk and had crowded on to a ship with over a thousand other like minded students, taking nine days to cross the Atlantic to Le Havre. For a time I had given up the idea of going when we learned that financial aid would not cover, but then my German prof got out her checkbook and wrote me a personal check—a loan I later repaid. Perhaps my parents had hoped that the money problem would deter me, but when that was no longer an issue, I am grateful that my mother helped me with the packing and my dad planned a family vacation that would end in New York from where my ship would depart. Only much later did I learn that my mother cried after they left me on board. Looking back at that young woman who sailed away from much that was familiar, I’m struck with the longings I had for new experiences along with an unconscious hope that they would not scare me too much. So why was I going? My original interest in studying German had roots no doubt in the fact that my Grandma Lehman always switched to what we called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” a Low German dialect, when she wanted to discuss something we children were not supposed to hear. How that practice of hers annoyed me! I was always interested in history—a way that I was like my Grandpa Lehman and different from the other adults in our family--, so living in Europe with those centuries old castles and cobble -stoned streets had great appeal. I took after my dad in wanting to see new places—only he would have chosen the jungles of South America had he been going. A sensitive child who had had both asthma and separation anxieties—perhaps there was also something about leaving my mother behind and accepting the challenge of breathing on my own. A friend of our family had taken a dim view of my going and warned me not to be changed by the liberal theology I would no doubt be exposed to. She didn’t know that I was already viewing the Bible less literally, a great relief for someone who as a kid had not understood why the Old Testament God would drown innocent babies in a flood just because their parents were bad or have wild bears devour children who made the mistake of making fun of some prophet—graphic pictures from our Bible story book. (As a child I did have a deep feeling about Jesus’ love.) I expected to be a lifelong Mennonite in spite of a scrutiny and judging that both shamed me and drove me to want to be perfect and above reproach. This meant that I often hid what I really felt even from myself and tried to push down negative emotions, especially anger. To say that I needed time and space to find myself may seem like a cliché unless one remembers the developmental tasks of adolescence to establish personal identity and autonomy and to begin to experience romantically intimate relationships. I don’t remember if we had been prepared for cultural shock or if it was that I understood what that term meant when I learned it later and associated it with the lost feeling that washed over me at times. When I got homesick or scared, I found ways to retreat. If threatened, there were judgments to think or mutter. Or I could escape into fiction or fantasies of my future with that special guy back home. I was also a regular letter writer. Ginny, a new friend, exploded once that I could just “check out” when things got too tough. I was surprised by the intensity of her feeling but halfway accepted her observation as true. I puzzled that I felt so much closer to my new friends—both American and German-- who accepted and seemed to like me as I was. This same friend also got upset with me when I assumed that if she did not have a faith in a personal God then she had no belief at all. Intense interactions like these, I learned, did not sever a feeling of connection as they might have with some back home. I began to feel the power of being known and knowing others. Living far away provides one the opportunity to see home from a new perspective. Several weeks before I’d left, President Johnson had made a television speech to explain why following the Gulf of Tonkin resolution he had now decided to send combat troops to Viet Nam. I followed that war’s buildup through the weekly editions of Time which I had been delighted to discover would be sent to me airmail with a simple change of address card. How precious that news in English became each week. I found that I was opposing the buildup of the war not simply from pacifist ideals, but for political reasons as well. I did not accept the domino theory. It was embarrassing though when I couldn’t keep up in conversations with my German friends and expressed my ideas in too simple German: “I don’t believe that war is the answer.” One image repeatedly haunted me—that of American pilots—supported by the prayers—at that point anyway—of Communist-fearing Christians—bombing to hell those defenseless villagers. It seemed all to like the wrath of that Old Testament God. The term “abuse of power” was one I’d learn later. In the meantime I was hearing from middle aged Germans about their suffering during the Second World War. My landlady told me how her husband—a tailor—had not been called to active service until close to the end because of some medical issue—I don’t remember what any more. She watched him march away, she said, uncertain she would ever see him again. As it turned out, he spent much of his time in France, in a prisoner of war camp, and returned with the knowledge of a few select curse words. My landlady told me how even some twenty years later she kept some chocolate by her bed for comfort when nightmares of the war disturbed her sleep. (Civilians had faced food shortages.) The husband/father of the family I was invited to spend Christmas with did not survive. That widow and her daughters had lived through the “liberation” of their city by Russian soldiers: “Sie waren grausam (cruel), nicht?” “Ja, sie waren grausam.” I wondered how close that cruelty (rape, looting?) had come to their household. I knew not to ask. It was clear that the loss of the husband/father was still keenly felt, as the university-aged daughters still gave their mother Christmas gifts designated from him. My roommate and I met Piezie, a university student who somehow had become separated from his family still in the East. Families’ being separated was common. Our group had visited a village where the border with its watch towers simply went right through a village. Piezie would drop by frequently—often at supper time, leading us to wonder if he had adequate stipend money for food. The question of reunification came up more than once. I remember his pounding his fist on the table and saying that if it were possible that the sacrifice of one German life would reunite East and West, he would volunteer in a second. I believed him. It was a time when I was getting less and less sure what exactly I would be willing to die for. I thought of him in 1990 with the dramatic footage of the Berlin Wall coming down and hoped he was somewhere celebrating. And there was the Holocaust. In Munich while my fellow traveler was taking a day off from sightseeing, I went for lunch alone at one of the famed Biergarten. The people at the communal table where I sat down were friendly and curious who this Fräulein was. After introductions, an elderly man surprised me by launching into an apology for the Nazis’ mass murder of the Jews. He and Germans like him had had no idea what was happening in those concentration camps, he said. Later it occurred to me that Lehman is a common Jewish surname. Perhaps he thought that I had lost grandparents or aunts and uncles and cousins. I don’t remember when I had first learned about the Holocaust. Could it possibly have been as late as high school? I do remember that at our Mennonite high school a progressive history teacher had asked the students one year to read The Diary of Anne Frank. I picked up my sister’s copy. He didn’t use it with our class. I seem to remember that some parents objected to Anne’s writing about the start of her first period. Did they really think that would be sexually arousing for their adolescent sons, or were those parents, like so many others, turning away from knowing about the horrors of the Jewish experience and hoping to protect their children as well? I also sensed a certain turning away among some Germans I met. Gisela, my dearest, closest friend, protested strongly when I said that I wanted to visit Dachau. So I did not. I remember hearing of someone who did not turn away. Helen was a group member whose German was so good she was assigned to one of the few rooms available in a university dorm. (Most of us were in private housing.) She told some of us how her German roommate had been spending days reading everything about the Holocaust she could find. My sense was that for the first time this young woman was taking in what had really happened. And at twenty-something she became depressed. With the feeling that Helen described it, I knew she was worried about her. I tried to imagine what it would be like inside to learn that your people had so recently been capable of such evil. Who would be left to look up to, to want to be like, to follow? Perhaps it reminded me when I was first forced to really look at the fate of our country’s indigenous people. That same progressive history teacher had included the Native Americans’ perspective. He had to bring in materials to supplement our text book which assumed the right of our government to oppress and conquer. For a while I was angry with him. I didn’t want to think that the founders and pioneers I’d read about with admiration were capable of that evil. Even with our Mennonite nonresistance—we had supposedly not killed any Indians-- it was clear how our farmers had benefitted from the taking of their land. But there was some protection because those atrocities were more comfortably distant. The war in Viet Nam, however, was now. One explanation for the rebellion of America’s youth in refusing to support and participate in that war can, I think, be understood as an extreme disillusionment with the lives of their parents. For Mennonite young who by and large had not grown up in the suburbs of the ‘50’s and who’d been raised with the value of nonparticipation in war, their getting caught up in the counterculture of mistrusting those over thirty and claiming new personal freedoms seems more complicated. Perhaps it was a form of assimilation, a repudiation of the old value of being “separate” from the world that was justified by joining the movement that was opposed to the war. As far as I knew the Sexual Revolution, which got intertwined with the war protest, “Make love, not war,” had not made its way to Goshen College by the mid Sixties. Couples caught in dorm rooms other than during infrequent open house hours were subject to suspension. I was shocked by the explicit dirty dancing of some of the students on the ship, as well as the fact that gals my age started shipboard romances with members of the Italian crew. I was incredulous too when a friend of my roommate bragged of his experiences in a Munich brothel (prostitution was legal there). The Germans seemed naturally less uptight about sexuality. My German landlady matter-of-factly volunteered her sexual history. Based on her experience of a broken first engagement following a traumatic first sexual experience, she thought it was important for guys to have lots of prior girl friends, thus insuring that they would be skillful partners, as her eventual husband had been. (I didn’t know then that this was the first such intimate communication I would have in a future career as a clinical psychologist!) Engaged couples wore their matching gold wedding bands on their left hands and would switch them to the right when they got married. I understood that—unlike how I’d been raised-- it was expected that engaged couples would sleep together. My biggest challenge that year in bridging a chasm regarding sexual mores came with my roommate, Nina. It’s hard to imagine a more mismatched pair. Ignoring the instructions, she’d brought her stuff in two trunks. I was the rule follower, eager to please in a culture that required Genauigkeit, i.e., exactness and precision. She seemed not to notice which prepositions took the dative or accusative pronoun. Now I wonder if perhaps she simply pretended not to care. But she was attractive and at ease socially. Both American and German heads turned to take a second look. Beside her-- before orthodontics and contact lenses-- I felt like an ugly duckling. One Saturday night—make that early Sunday morning--I awoke and realized that Nina had returned from a party to our room in the Old City accompanied by her crush at the moment, a Swede named Ostein. If that wasn’t surprise enough he picked up a book I’d left on the table —a mere three feet from my narrow single bed. Was it a Bible? I don’t remember. Yes it was. I remember now that he opened it and began in a mocking tone to read aloud. I muttered a few words and rolled over and pretended to go back to sleep. Eventually there was the click of the light going out and then the rustling and shuffling of bodies on the floor. There were soft moans: “Ostein, Ostein.” I don’t remember how long it took me to fall back to sleep or when they left. When I awoke the next morning, a lone German Mark lying on the floor told me that the events of the previous night had been more than a troubling dream. I don’t remember even trying to label the confusion I felt. I do remember preparing comfort food for lunch. Although I now desperately wanted to live alone, I hesitated to speak with our program director. I didn’t want word of this event to leak out—not so much I suspect to protect Nina as to shield myself from being known as some “quaintly innocent Mennonite lass.” Perhaps what had happened was no big deal. (What had happened is surely a more common occurrence today in dorm settings, and roommates come to an understanding or part ways.) Now I know that an experience of being present when others are having sex, what psychoanalysts call the “primal scene,” can be more than uncomfortable. Depending on the circumstances, it can be traumatic. The feelings I couldn’t find labels for were hurt, anger, and—strangely-- shame. I decided to tell no one. By midday Ostein walked Nina home. I remember how he once again towered over me as I sat at the table eating my chicken and noodles. All three of us were tense and distant. No one mentioned the night before. Later—was it days or weeks? --my judgments did spout out. My words in hindsight seem ridiculously self righteous—something about wanting the white of my wedding gown to be more than symbolic. “We were really drunk that night,” Nina protested and disappeared behind the curtain to the tiny room with the hotplate and sink, our kitchen/ bathroom. (The toilet was in a closet two flights down.) When she returned later, her eyes were red. With a shock I saw how much my words had wounded her. I did not want to be a person who injured others. I had been on the receiving end of that sort of harshness. Maybe following all the rules wasn’t the most important thing after all. Rather than communicating my upset directly or asking Nina to change her behavior, which she had anyway, I had attacked her. I’d become the aggressor. (Oh, Nina, you have no idea how many times I’ve wished I could have pulled myself out of that bed, “You guys need coffee. Let me make some.” I did not think about the effect of the alcohol and besides Ostein had hurt my feelings. I’m sorry it took me so long to put myself in your place. I should have understood feeling lost and longing for connections. For what it’s worth, hiding in fiction or fantasy is not the best way either. I know that we both paid for what we didn’t know. I just wish we could have helped each other more.) There were more positive experiences of getting to know others and of being known. Following a week of seminars and sightseeing in Berlin, which the government paid for so that students would understand why holding on to West Berlin was so politically important, early one Sunday morning my friend and I faced a long and dreary train trip across East Germany back to the West. A middle-aged couple—strangely subdued and withdrawn—occupied the window seats in the compartment we entered. Gradually the German student we were travelling with got them talking, and we heard their story. They had been German-speaking farmers living in Romania who had been forced to work in a Soviet labor camp in Siberia. After 21 years of work and nine years of applying, they’d finally received permission to immigrate to West Germany, allowed to take only a few possessions and one hundred American dollars. They’d been on the train for days, but that evening they were to be reunited with some family and their now adult son. I tried to imagine their hopes and fears—there was no evidence of joy. As the day wore on they declined any purchases from the coffee and sandwich cart which would periodically come down the aisle outside our compartment. Still their stomachs were growling. I assumed they had exhausted the food they’d brought along and had no German money. Offering to buy them something would go against their cultural pride, and I could not imagine eating the bread and cheese sandwiches we’d brought with us in front of them. Dividing the sandwiches in half, I begged them to accept some. Reluctantly they did. Perhaps more for me than for them-- I don’t know. By the beginning of the Spring Semester I was finding that my money would not stretch far enough to finance a much wanted trip to England in the summer. From there we would board the ship at Southampton for home. I decided to find a job even though it was not usual for a university student to do a blue collar job. I began working one day a week at the laundry for the university’s five specialized medical clinics. The work was boring—feeding washed items into a roller which both dried and ironed them. There was time to talk to co-workers. Two sisters, about my age, were particularly friendly. Imagine my surprise when Lilli said to me one day, “Wir sind Mennoniten.” She was equally surprised when I told her that I was also a Mennonite. Lilli asked me to help her with her English, and that felt good after having been on the receiving end of language help all those months. Learning to know them and hearing their story was a gift to me. Their German-speaking parents had fled from Russia and had immigrated to Brazil. Eventually their father had died and the conditions in Brazil were not as good as those of their relatives who’d been fortunate enough to get to Canada. Since it would take years to get permission to emigrate from Brazil, their family had come first to Germany where many fewer persons wanted to immigrate to Canada. Having grown up in the “Old Mennonite” church, I knew next to nothing of the Russian Mennonites’ experience. As a child I had watched my mother pack relief goods for the needy that MCC was helping in Europe after the war. Learning how the Russian Mennonites fled persecution and famine enlarged by awareness of the global Mennonite experience. (Years later I learned from my second husband how his father and extended family had also fled from the Ukraine to Canada. There is a term for those emigrants like Lilli’s family whose journey to a new home first involved a stop in Germany. Some stayed but the majority went on to other countries. They are called Umsiedler.) Although my stay in Germany was also temporary, the shifts in internal spaces were permanent. Our family friend had been right that I would be changed. I remember one March morning walking into the woods behind a youth hostel in the Black Forest. Sitting on a log I began a conversation with God unlike any I’d had to that point. I talked out loud about the things I’d been learning and felt deep, deep down that it was good. I risked admitting that I could not love a God who would condone Christians’ bombing of the defenseless Vietnamese and then damn them as nonbelievers. The problem was that my God had been too small. I knew that I wanted to try to live my life guided by the ethic of love. Although it scared me, there was joy in trusting this new knowing and gratitude at having found such a space.
Celia Lehman Dalton, Ohio
I was one of eleven in a study group sponsored by the Great Lakes Mennonite Central Committee. We went to see what the Mennonites were doing to help alleviate the suffering in the Holy Land with the recent conflict between Israel/Palestine. After our eleven-day tour we were to come back home and report what we had learned. Everyone in the group was new to me. Here I was a country girl from the little town of Kidron, Ohio with these well-traveled, intelligent, professional people. I need not have worried about getting around as two Mennonite couples working in Jerusalem planned each of the eleven days we were with them. Each morning we were taken to a site where a guide would explain what the situation was there and what was being done to help solve the problems. In the afternoon we would visit Biblical sites and in the evening have a debriefing meeting. Each morning a catered bus would pick us up at the hotel and take us around. Up to now we had heard the Palestinian viewpoint of the injustices; today we were to go hear the Israeli version. I didn’t want to miss this. We met in the front lobby to catch a ride to West Jerusalem when someone announced, “The bus will be late this morning.” “Good,” I thought. “I’ll have a quick moment to use the bathroom just around the corner of the lobby.” I was gone which seemed only a moment and when I came back to join the group there was no one around. I looked again. There was not a soul in sight; and no bus to be seen anywhere! My mind raced in many directions—“Had the rapture occurred and I was left behind? Why didn’t anyone miss me? What will I do all day here by myself? Maybe I can take a taxi into Jerusalem alone? No way! Perhaps I’d have to climb the three flights of steps back to my room and rest and sleep. That wouldn’t work. My roommate (also a widow, but obviously independent) had both keys to the room in her purse so I’d have to secure one somewhere else. Maybe I could walk leisurely along the busy streets?” None appealed to me; I wanted to be where my group was this very moment. I looked and saw the clerk busy behind his desk. He spoke Arabic. Would he understand my dilemma if I explained it to him in English? I’d give it a try. I addressed him and asked, “Where are the people who were waiting in the lobby?” He gazed at me for a moment and said, “They all left on the bus that picked them up.” “But they left me behind!” I blurted out. He searched my anxious face and said, “I’ll call your leader on the bus and have them come back for you.” “Whew!” I thanked him and went by the door to wait for them. But they did not appear. Instead a taxi drove up, honked his horn at me and motioned for me to come.” I hadn’t ordered a taxi. Why did he persist? I went back to the clerk standing at the desk and asked, “What is going on? Why is the taxi always motioning for me to come?” The corners of his mouth turned up as he said, “I ordered a taxi to take you to the bus.” With that information I hurried to catch my ride. “Would the driver know where to catch the bus? Why was it taking so long?” I tried to ask questions but his limited English gave me little consultation. Then, after breathing a prayer for delivery, I saw a bus parked by the side of the road. He pulled behind it and stopped. I offered to pay but he refused. I hurried up the steps of the bus and faced the group. I raised my arms and gasped, ”I’m here!” Everyone responded with a shout. “Hurrah! Hurrah! We’re all together again.” I hurried to the empty seat and we were on our way.
Eileen Lehman Apple Creek, Ohio
It was a cold, windy, fall day and I was working ground on my parents' dairy farm. The Oliver 77 tractor pulled a harrow preparing the twenty-acre field for winter wheat. There was always work to do on our 150 acre farm but I was a twenty year old daughter who didn't want to farm or be a farmer's wife. All of the Hartzler children worked on the farm until they were twenty-one. Then we were "of age" and were free. I desperately wanted to go to college. I had graduated from high school and that was something that my siblings did not get to do. I should be satisfied. I sensed that my parents knew my feelings because of my nearly perfect report cards and my successes in high school. But I had an obligation to work at home for three years after high school. Several of my church friends and my cousins were at Goshen College for years already. I thought and yearned and prayed on the tractor that afternoon in 1952. I was not even sure what I wanted to study in college. It didn't really matter. Before milking time that evening, I had assurance that I would get to college. I knew God spoke to me. The next spring a local pastor asked if I was interested in joining an MYF youth team for the summer. The team would visit Ohio Mennonite Churches and give programs and encourage the local MYF. On June 12 I turned 21. I was free. The next week I joined the youth team. The team members were all Goshen College students and encouraged me to go to Goshen. They said I was good enough and I was college material. My father was usually negative about finishing high school and going to college, especially for a girl. Those young people usually left the Mennonite Church. But he had prospered during the 1940 World War II years and the farm was paid for. He even bought the farm across the road. My father said he would pay my college bills. What a relief! I had no savings or money of my own. I told him I would never want the five heifers he gave to the others to start their dairy herds. Goshen College fulfilled all my yearnings and dreams. I graduated in 1955. My husband graduated in 1956. I spent 30 years in public schools teaching in elementary classrooms. Our three children went to Goshen College and one graduated from EMC. Surely the Lord has blessed my days!
Freeman Lehman Apple Creek, Ohio
Singing has always been a special interest of mine from early childhood. Participation in family singing and various ensembles in church through elementary and high school nourished my passion for music making. My father and grandfather were both church song leaders and provided lessons in sight singing and ear training. After a year and a half of college at Eastern Mennonite I transferred to Goshen College. It was time to decide on a major. I had interest in Biblical studies as well. My faculty advisor, after looking at my past experience and musical aptitude, steered me into the study of music. This led me into teaching, church music and performance. I discovered theology in the study and performance of sacred choral literature and church music. So both interests, music and theology, were satisfied.
Elizabeth Nisly-Nagele
Guilford, Indiana
I walk into the barn in the light of morning. I am singing a church hymn, as I turn on the light and walk down the thin walk space to the other part of the barn, spilling water on my pants from the bucket I’m carrying. “Hey, girls”, I call out. “Good morning. How’d you sleep?” As I open the gate and walk into the pen, there has still been no answer. Right inside the door my girls wait for their breakfast. I open the silver metal trash can and scoop out cupsful of sweet, sticky, molasses feed. I put it in different buckets, one for each of them and then hang the buckets on their respective hooks. My goats (or the girls) know exactly which one of the buckets to go to, and without any arguing they dig in. I stand and enjoy their hunger and health. I am so much more thankful when they are always healthy than I used to be. As they eat I stare off into space and think back.
When my family moved onto the farm, we found the previous owners had left two goats behind. That’s when I fell in love; I knew I wanted to raise dairy goats. They were so fun and individual. They each had their own look in their eyes, and their own personality. I knew them like the back of my hand, and if I walked into their stall and Blackey didn’t butt me, and Browney wasn’t really bloated, then I knew we had a problem. But as the years went by and I got old enough to start 4-H, I wanted to show goats. We tried and tried to breed them, but they never got pregnant. We finally decided buy a goat kid from another farm. We went and picked her out, from among all her brother and sisters, cousins and playmates. When we went in to pay for her, the seller said we had to name her. When he said it should start with a C, my brother suggested Celsie. I have a cousin named Kelsie, so I thought, why not; I didn’t have a better idea (they were going to name her Cadillac). So my little Celsie came home with us. She was born on Valentine’s Day, and when we brought her home she was only three weeks old. I brought her into our mud room so that when I had to get up and feed her in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t have to go outside in the cold. She grew and flourished. Since I usually had food when I came to her, she learned to associate me with food, and respond with her own little unique bleat. Even when I didn’t come with food, when I called out her name or a greeting she would still answer. It brought me so much joy to walk into the barn and know that my kid depended on me and loved me. It was obvious we had a deep bond, and we worked together really well. When I showed her in showmanship at the 4-H fair, people could tell she loved me. When she was a little over a year old I sent her back to her home farm to get bred. She came back bred, and I started to excitedly anticipate her kids. She would always be my first kid, I knew, but the saying is true, your heart grows as it has more to love. But as her five months grew to a close, I didn’t see any sign of her getting bigger, or developing an udder. Her due date came and went. No kids. I was disappointed, but I looked forward to trying again next year. The next fall, she once again went off to the breeder. This time a while after she came back we took her to the vet to have her ultra-sounded. They looked and looked, but didn’t find any kids. I couldn’t believe it. I had been so sure that this year Celsie and I would become Moms. But that apparently wasn’t going to happen. Celsie had grown to be so much more than a goat to me. I would often go to do chores, and talk to my goats. They would all listen (they didn’t really have a choice), but Celsie seemed to really listen. She did more than listen, she understood. When I would come out mad at my family or myself, upset by what someone did or said, I would tell her all about it and work through the problem with her. Just talking out loud helped me to step back and calm down, and she would listen and look at me with sad eyes. She would come up and put her head against my shoulder, and give me a hug, as only she could give, and she would stand patiently, while I would cry into her neck. But on the days when I was happy, or extra grateful for something, I would come into the barn singing and smiling, happily telling her all about my good life. She would smile, and prance around, being happy along with me. She was the best therapist ever, always waiting, always patient, always understanding, and non-judgmental. By this time she was three years old, and we had been through a lot together. It was later that year that she started to get thinner and thinner and started not eating. First she was just a little thin, than she started to look smaller, than you could start to see her ribs, and eventually she was all bones. When I felt her I didn’t feel meat, just bone and thin skin. We talked to my goat owner friends; the people who helped teach me everything I know. We talked to my vets and the feed store employees. They all had ideas for me to try, and we tried them. Different supplements, feeds, vitamins, minerals, organic, natural antibodies, nothing seemed to help. She got thinner and thinner. But what was just as hard to deal with was how she changed mentally. When I would walk into the barn, instead of standing and waiting for me, and responding to my call, she would lay in her pen, only lifting her head when I knelt beside her. I would talk to her and she would listen, but I didn’t get any response from her, she was just too tired and weak. It got to the point where I dreaded going out to see her, afraid that she would have gotten worse or even died. She was literally skin and bone, so weak she could hardly even lift her head to great me. I still loved her so much, and I knew she returned it, even if she could hardly show it. I finally accepted that she wasn’t going to get better. She would just get weaker and weaker until, her body had fought as long as it could, and would give up. I knew I had the option to end it -- euthanizing her. How could I end the life of one of my best friends? I had talked to her and told her so many of my secrets, that she knew more of about me than anyone but my best human friends and God knew. But yet, I knew it was inhumane to let her live on in agony. Her life wasn’t good, it was just pain. I like to think I brought her a little joy, but I knew not enough to keep her alive for it. On March 5, 08, I finally decided to end Celsie’s pain. She had become very unresponsive, and I knew she was done fighting. I knew she fought with all her power, and she wanted to live, but her body was done, gone, wasted away into nothing. That morning as I walked out of my piano teacher’s house after my lesson, I saw Mom on the phone. As I got in the van, I realized she was talking to the vet clinic. I had told her to go ahead and schedule the euthanization as soon as possible, but to hear her actually making the arrangements, made it seem so much more real. But I was at peace with my decision. I knew that I was doing this for her because I loved her, not because I didn’t care or I was a mean person. I had heard people say that putting an animal to sleep can be the most loving thing to do, and at that moment I believed it. It still didn’t make it easy, but it made it easier. Only a day later we carefully loaded her up into the back of our van, and drove to the vets. We carried her in and laid her on the floor in the back of the clinic. Nicky (the vet) and the nurses came in and prepped Celsie. “You ready for this?” She asked. I took a breath knowing that as soon as I said the next word, it would end Celsie’s life. I had the power over another life, and I had to do what I felt was right. “Yes, I’m ready” I said. My Mom and I knelt on the floor beside Celsie, and laid our hands on her side. Stick, the needle slid into her skin. Slowly, slowly, Nicky squeezed the chemical into Celise’s veins. I watched as she fell asleep: slower, slower, her breath became. Until, quietly, peacefully, she slept, never to awaken again. The vet and nurse left us, Mom and me, to have our own funeral and mourning time. Mom cried, and I think I just sat there, not willing to cry. Not willing to cry because I was self-conscious, I wanted to mourn, I was definitely sad, but yet I didn’t cry. My goat club leader came in and gave me a hug, and told us to take our time, and we could wipe our eyes with the paper towels over there on the shelf. Eventually we left, and moved on. We went to homeschool archery and the organizer gave me a hug. I don’t know if she will ever know how much that hug meant to me. To know that she cared, that it was OK for me to be sad, was a wonderful gift. She told me a story about a rabbit she had to do the same thing to, and to know I wasn’t alone, was a gift. That day was heart breaking and heartwarming at the same time. I lost part of my heart with Celsie’s last breath, but I gain strength from my decision and from the process of mourning and moving on. Life did move on. I was too busy to dwell on it all the time. But even now two years later, when I go to the barn, I miss her welcome. I miss knowing that when I poured out my woes to her in song, she understood, and that when I was happy, she shared my joy. She didn’t judge, just loved me for who I was. She took me as a friend, and I her.
I awake from my thoughts. The goats are done eating. Life has moved on, I have different goats now, though none the same as Celsie. I will never forget her, she taught me too much. She taught me how to love so much you are willing to let go, she taught me how to mourn, not to forget, but to move on. She will always have been my fist kid, and will forever hold a place in my heart as such.
Wendy Waters
1968
My gift that year is tossed through my doorway, and flops on my bed in front of me. The package is oblong with wobbly edges, wrapped in cheap thin paper; I think I hear a muttered happy birthday as my mother continues down the hallway to join my father in the kitchen. It is evening, after supper. I don't recall the reason for my mother's lack of enthusiasm for my birthday. Perhaps the buying of, and wrapping of the gift, was enough output for her in one day. I did not understand the ebb and flow of her attention to me. I know she is often unhappy, angry, and my feeling of responsibility for her is already nestled deep within me.
I sit with the gift for a while – uncertain, waiting, sitting cross-legged on my bed, alone. When I hear no returning footsteps, I slowly peel the scotch tape back from the torn edges of the hastily wrapped package. I don't know what to expect, but I like the flannel pajamas. They are soft and will be warm against my skin. I lay them on the bed in front of me, silent.
2008
I am up early walking the beach, alone for the moment. Back at the house are my five girlfriends who have come with me to Rehoboth to celebrate my 50th birthday. It is October and although officially fall, the air is mild; the day before we went swimming together, topless in the green waves.
This morning the sun is warming the sand and the breeze is gentle on my skin. The sand stretches out long in front of me, eased clean by the waves; wide and clear, it draws me south along the edge of the surf. The waves are flat and I am full, my heart open, my eyes scanning the water for the flash of a black dolphin fin. I am never the one to first spy the dolphin; skills of observation are not high on my list of abilities. Perhaps that is why the sea put the shell directly in my path, alone, centered precisely to intercept my steps. It is a perfectly formed, curved conch shell, larger than my fist. I am stunned and sit rather self-consciously down beside it, wary of even touching it. Perhaps it still contains life, perhaps it is mine only for the moment, a gift to be seen and then returned to the water. After several moments I pick it up and turn it over – empty, pearly pink and smooth on the inside. Surely, then, a gift for me to hold and carry and keep.
I hold it loosely in my hand as I turn north and head back to the house, smiling.
Paul Shankland Indianapolis, Indiana I suppose the asbestos siding on the old house on the dead end of Grant Street had been white at one time but all those years at the intersection of the New York Central and the Pennsy railroads had turned it gray. It was a tired old two-story but it was home that year and would be for a couple more. The longest of any place yet. We were refugees. Oh, not from war, famine or politics; not from some far country. No, we were refugees from Dad's paranoid schizophrenia, running from his demons or toward his delusions. Like all refugees we faced discrimination. Dad drove a truck for the furniture factory only because Grandad had been the plant foreman for 20 years. Mom had to find work 30 miles away. As a 15-year-old sophomore in high school I was constantly dodging the words that hurt much worse than sticks and stones, and there were some of those as well. My brother had his own mental health issues and the welfare department was snooping around making threats of removal. On a Wednesday night in October 1958 the house was dark except for the blue light of the TV in the living room. It must have been Wednesday night because, after sending Craig to bed early after his latest tantrum, Mom had gone to the prayer meeting at the Nazarene Church. I turned off the TV at 9:00 and headed up the old squeaky stairs to bed. As I grabbed the newel post at the top of the stairs and turned toward my room I saw light coming from under the closet door in Craig's room. He was apparently in there reading as he often did when sent to bed early for getting in trouble at school or throwing one of his destructive tantrums. I went to tell my brother that Mom would be home in a few minutes from church and he better get to bed if he didn't want to get caught. At least we didn't have to worry about what Dad would do tonight. He had just left with a truckload of furniture from the factory. When I opened the closet door I was looking directly into Craig's face. A face bloated and discolored as a result of the rope that was tied to his closet rod. I had never seen a real human corpse before but I knew he was dead. That grayish purplish skin wasn't anything like the faked up bodies in funeral homes but I knew he was dead. I stood frozen looking through the door of death for what seemed a thousand years but will only be for the rest of my life. When I was able to move I ran downstairs and out front, grabbed a bicycle and headed toward the church a few blocks away to meet Mom. I found her in the second or third block and blurted out what had happened. After that there was chaos. Mom made some calls, from our house or Granddad's a block away on Morton Street, I can't recall. I simply sat in shock with my brother's dead face before my mind. The first person I remember coming through that glassed-in porch on the side of the house was the pastor from the Nazarene Church. I don't know how Craig's body got from the closet to the bed. Maybe the preacher helped, maybe officialdom had been there first. In any case the preacher (I can almost remember his name) began to pray and called on Mom and met to pray that God would raise Craig back to life just as Jesus had raised Lazarus and Tabitha and as God had raised Jesus. The preacher cried out, prayed and shouted for a couple of hours that were actually about twenty minutes. Mom of course just wept and I prayed from time to time because I felt guilty not doing so. Finally the preacher ran out of breathe and energy declaring the we just didn't have enough faith. It occurred to me later, on the road to atheism, that the house of Craig was clearly deserted and considering what we would all be facing had he revived, better so. Officially, Craig's death was declared an accident. In 1958 there were no voices in the Christian faith to contradict the notion that suicides can't go to heaven. Mom was raised conservative Catholic and had moved to fundamentalist Protestant. What else could it be but an accident. A lot happened after that that I don't remember well, lots of people saying meaningless or stupid things at the viewing, a funeral that I can't remember at all. But some things did really matter. Two aunts that I did not know of came and asked to see me. They were sisters of my birth mother Lucy whom Dad divorced when I was three years old and I never saw again. I was talked out of meeting them. It is haunting yet. Finally, a door was opened that could never be closed again, a door on the abyss. Nietsche said that if you look long into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. Family members of suicides know the truth of that more than most. The unthinkable is now thinkable. A solution that was beyond the pale is now just through that door. A resolution that was totally outside of awareness is now a constantly available choice. An escape and surcease of pain that could not be imagined is now a simple choice. The choice must be made again and again.
A refugee camp (Western Honduras, 1987) J. Daniel Hess Indianapolis, Indiana
Our film crew had seen vivid refugee footage at the United Nations library, we had been in the Site 2 refugee camp in Thailand that held 157,000 people, we had interviewed refugees from Russia, Ethiopia, South Africa, China, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, but none of those experiences brought the refugee experience as close to me as our visit to a camp in western Honduras. The project, sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee, was intended to inform the North American community of the world-wide refugee crisis. We were urged to present refugees as human beings, not one-dimensional stereotypes. I had prepared by reading books and reports. The case was classic: For decades, the wealth of El Salvador was held in the hands of several leading families who owned huge estates. I had heard the number 14 in Costa Rica. I had also read about the peones who camped along the roads between the edge of the road and the fence lines of the haciendas. According to outside analysts, the wealthy few had enjoyed an alliance with the military and the Catholic Church. But encouraged by a papal encyclical in the late 1960s, the church was beginning to pay attention to the plight of the working poor. Priests and even bishops began to understand the dynamic of power that enriched a few and impoverished the many. At the same time, desperate people got involved in insurrectionist activities. The United States feared that the social unrest was caused by Communists from the Soviet Union, and thus lent arms and money to the El Salvadoran government to try to squelch the insurrection and to quiet the church. That, in a nutshell, is what I knew from reading. We flew to western Honduras from Tegucigalpa in order to see the camp from the air. It looked as though a mountain top had been flattened to hold the camp. On all sides were steeps ravines, discouraging any attempt to escape. Linda Shelley, an intelligent, highly motivated and spunky Mennonite Central Committee worker met us at the small airport and gave us an intense orientation before we started the next day to drive to the camp. We learned that Honduras didn’t want the Salvadorans here, and thus the out-of-the-way settlement. The army was known to send bombs and missiles into the camps at night. Our trip was on very bad road that required a 4 x 4. Linda drove; the film director sat in the cab with her. Surely the distance was not as far as it seemed, what with our bumping and shaking over ruts. Then several men with rifles walked onto the road and waved for us to stop. They jumped on the truck with us and told Linda to drive on. Then they cocked their guns, a small act which happened to catch my attention. A second group of soldiers wanted a ride, which they got. When we finally reached the Honduras military station outside the camp, they refused our entrance to the camp because, they said, Linda didn’t have the right papers. She explained that she had completed the requisites as published by the army, but they did not accept her animated defense. They insisted that she go to an office in a government center for yet another signature. The rest of us were to stay there at the military site while she was gone. We got off the truck and sat by the fence, not at all certain of their integrity or their intensions. But several hours later, Linda returned with the signature and we were allowed into camp. There among ten thousand El Salvadorans we saw and heard their stories. Unfortunately our 28-minute documentary film Journeys of Hope could not do justice to the heart-rending tragedies reported one after the other by frightened, grieving and sometimes angry souls. We learned that the military decided to empty an entire state of its population because of the increased resistance from that quarter. So it used tanks on the ground and armed helicopters above to begin state-wide push, somewhat like a cattleman forcing the stock to one corner of the ranch. Families with small children fled over the rough terrain by night and hid during the day in order to escape the artillery. Hundreds of people were shot and left behind. One lad, a young teenager, told us he saw every member of his family shot to death. Those who weren’t killed were forced toward the border. There, a deep river separated El Salvador from Honduras. A few could swim; others tried to find branches or old tires to help them cross. One dear old man told of crossing with a child on his back. Bodies of drowned people swept past him. He returned again and again for other children. Meanwhile the Salvadodran tanks and helicopters continued to shoot. Meanwhile Honduras didn’t want more Salvadorans in their country, an animosity still burning from a soccer riot ten years earlier. The Honduran army sent tanks and helicopters that ultimately became the partner in a horrible pinchers movement against the the helpless people. In one day alone, more than 500 people died at the river. Those who survived, that is, those who made it to the Honduran side were likely to have removed their clothing in order to swim more freely. On the Honduras side they hid, both from the Honduras army and because of their nakedness. Church people in Honduras learned of the massacre and rushed to the scene. As one man told me, “How can we love God if we can’t love our neighbor?” Refugees by the hundreds were rescued and protected in private homes until the United Nations gave money to set up a camp. Honduras’ contribution was a mountain top, inaccessible except for the road that ran past the military station. Our plan was to film for two full days. After attending an sharing session in which I learned that many of the Salvadorans thought of their plight as similar to the Children of Israel who survived Egypt but now struggled in a wilderness, I decided to ask to stay in the camp for the night rather than to go back to Linda’s house. A family immediately invited me to remain with them. Their simple hut, measuring perhaps 15’ by 15’ over a dirt floor was open at one end for the kitchen and closed at the other for a bedroom. I spent the late afternoon and early evening playing with two little children. I went with one of them to get the week’s ration of corn. (Enroute we came upon a crying child who had stumbled and spilled a container of corn. People gathered around to help her pick up the grains one by one.) Mother and older daughter spent several hours grinding the corn on a stone. Their hard work yielded tasty tortillas for our evening meal. When night came, so did darkness. As there was no electricity in the camp, the darkness seemed to touch our eyes and faces. All of the family retired except the father. He brought a chair for me, he sat on a stump just three feet away. Between us he placed a small candle. And then, close to the flickering candle, he told me this family’s story of flight and fear and loss. I listened with my heart. When he finished his account he offered to lead me to the toilet that sat on the edge of the precipice. Since it was totally dark, he placed my hand on his shoulder and led me step by step in a path between huts. When we returned to his place, he offered me the one bed, but I declined, saying I would be pleased to sleep on the chair. He insisted. Then he said he would find a pillow. Here I objected the louder. I did not need a pillow, I said. He allowed me to go to bed without a pillow, but in the night while I was asleep, I felt soft hands slowly lifting my head and tucking a pillow under it. The refugees were caring for me. Early the next morning we heard bombs. The father identified the exact kind and size and where they were likely dropped. Then they set out breakfast: My countenance fell. There on my plate was the one egg allotted to a family that week. One egg per person per week. I tried my best to refuse it but they insisted. Never have I eaten an egg so precious. The morning was rainy and thus the camp was a muddy mess. But it was also the morning or commemoration of a journey that Jesus is reported to have taken. These Salvadoran sojourners, young and old, walked from one end of camp to the other, singing songs of deliverance and salvation. I walked too, in around and through water puddles and had a clearest sense that Jesus himself was there, right beside the old woman who walked with a cane. Jesus. As we left, there were many words and phrases hanging from the rafters of my mind. One would not go away. It was said by an old man with a quiet voice speaking of the Salvadoran military incursion, “…and with the help of your government….” These people did, in fact, begin a return to El Salvador in the year following our visit. I can’t imagine the trauma of beginning all over again, in lands and buildings destroyed by armies and with members of their families forever gone. Last year at a Helping Hands Festival in Indianapolis, I met a chap, studying at Marian College here in town. I learned that he was born in the camp on the very year we visited.
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